A content management system, such as a Digital Asset Management system (DAM) is often employed to enable multiple users to store, search, and access content that is owned or licensed by an organization. This content is generally provided as one or more media objects in a digital format, such as pictures, text, videos, graphics, illustrations, images, audio files, fonts, colors, and the like. To make content globally available, it is desirable for users to search for content using a desired language. To accommodate multiple languages, a searching system may use multiple search indices, such as one search index for each language. It is generally time consuming and expensive to create and maintain indices in multiple languages.
In addition, it is desirable to include multiple categories of metadata about the content that may be searched. Some search systems use only keywords. Such keywords may comprise a controlled vocabulary that uniquely identifies each keyword, and distinguishes meanings when a keyword has multiple meanings. Keywords illustrate an example of structured metadata. However, it is desirable to also enable searching of other categories of metadata, such as captions, titles, paragraphs, date, context, and/or other categories of metadata that may be known about content beyond just keywords. Such categories are sometimes referred to as unstructured metadata. Further, it is desirable to enable searching of all categories in multiple languages. However, creating and maintaining multiple language indices that include multiple categories is generally more time consuming and expensive than a single language index.